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Karachi, Solo Show, Washed upon the shore

My gallery is a noncommercial space, a place for experimentation and new ideas, says Amin Gulgee

Veera Rustomji: For your recent show at Canvas Gallery, Zarmeene Shah’s supporting text indicated that your work was derived from the moon in Haruki Murakami’s IQ84. It seems then that this series of sculptures have moved away from the Char Bagh theme and the Mughal gardens. Tell us about this transition of influences for your work and the issues you touch upon in ‘Washed Upon the Shore’.

Amin Gulgee: There were two influences for my current work. One was Murakami’s novel 1Q84 and the other was the painting by Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Bosch’s painting is as enigmatic as the artist himself. The moral message remains a mystery debated by art historians.1Q84 is about the protagonists of the novel entering a parallel reality in which two moons exist. The novel is also a love story and about ritual.

VR: While your sculptures have a very demanding presence because of the scale and material, the use of performance art mingling with the display at Canvas Gallery was really interesting and powerful. What exactly came first? The work, or the idea of performances parallel to tangible art?

AM: I do not see the performance or my sculpture and installation works as separate. When I envisioned the show, both were equally important for me. For me the performance work was about personal rituals and markings. Outside the gallery space, Sunil Shankar was delousing Joshindar Chaggar, who sat below him. For me this was a memory of childhood when my mother sat me below her and ran a thickly toothed comb through my hair removing the lice that were feeding off of me. It was a comforting and loving act.

Inside the gallery, Erum Bashir was alone in a room of coal in which she interacted with the “Third Moon” mounted upon the wall. The act of rolling upon the coal marked her and she gradually transformed, coated in a film of black.

Further in the gallery space, Zeerak Ahmed sat upon stairs behind a wall of iron and nails. She spoke in tongues over a sound piece by Haamid Rahim while gazing across at the Amber Moon and the Green Moon suspended in front of her.

Finally, behind my installation “Garden Triptych”, Ammad Tahir, using one finger, marked the chest and face of Ali Junejo with swamp-green paint.

Performance, Washed Upon the Shore: Sunil Shankar and Joshindar Chaggar - Photo courtesy Art Now PakistanPerformance, Washed Upon the Shore: Sunil Shankar and Joshindar Chaggar – Photo courtesy Art Now Pakistan

VR: You have a very prolific portfolio as an artist and I think many in the art circle would like to know what pulls you into different projects. Having your own gallery, interacting with the fashion industry from your jewelry line and pushing for performance art are just a few accomplishments on your radar. Do you think being involved in a multitude of projects comes naturally to you or have you consciously over the years wanted to branch out and be involved in more arenas?

AM: I have a fluid trajectory. One thing leads to another and it’s a process of letting go. Everything I do connects and it helps me think and understand. I would like to point out that I have not made jewelry since 2007.

VR: What new projects should we be looking forward to in 2016 from Amin Gulgee?

AM: My next project is a show that I am co-curating with Niilofur Farooq on the pivotal decade of the 1970s in Pakistan. The exhibition will be held in March 2016 at Amin Gulgee Gallery and will feature around forty artists. Some of the artists asked to contribute to the show were young adults in the 70s and others are younger for whom the 70’ is a myth and a mystery. My gallery is a noncommercial space. It is a place for experimentation and new ideas.

VR: You have shown a lot of support – and provided a platform in your gallery – for performance art through Dreamscape. What are some of the struggles that performance artists have to face with in Pakistan and how do you see the future of performance art in this country?

AM: I have a hard time predicting the future but what I know is that there is a lot of energy and excitement about performance art in Pakistan now. Again, there are a lot of challenges because of performance art’s noncommercial nature. Hopefully there will be funding and support for such ventures in the future.

Amber Moon, Green Moon 2015. Copper and glass, 48 x 48 x 25 inches - Photo courtesy Art Now PakistanAmber Moon, Green Moon 2015. Copper and glass, 48 x 48 x 25 inches – Photo courtesy Art Now Pakistan

VR: In the recently published catalogue of Dreamscape, where the performances have been meticulously documented, Dreamscape has been described as a “community of storytellers and translators…partaking and encountering, by bringing something to the work, or being able to take away from it.” It would be great if you could talk about your interactions with performance artists in your career as it seems that it is a tiny misunderstood community. What do you look for in a performance piece and do you have any particular performances which have been embedded in your mind?

AM: It is always interesting to work as a curator with artists on their performance works. It is a very gentle task in which one tries to help the artist better understand his or her idea and its execution.

My next project is a show that I am co-curating with Niilofur Farooq on the pivotal decade of the 1970s in Pakistan. Some of the artists asked to contribute to the show were young adults in the 70s and others are younger for whom the 70s is a myth and a mystery.

VR: Since you’re well known and spoken very fondly off among young art students, especially in Karachi, tell us a little bit about your years as an art student at Yale and your initial projects. Any instances you would like to revisit and change or any pieces of advice you wished you heard yourself as a young Pakistani artist?

AM: It is a pleasant surprise for me that I am spoken well of! I was not an art student at Yale, though. I did a double major in Economics and Art History. My parents did not want me to become an artist and that’s why I majored in Economics and at that time I wanted to get far away from both Pakistan and art. My sophomore year, my friend Dominique Malaquais took me to my first Art History class. It was on the Baroque and I fell in love with the idea of seeing art as opposed to supply and demand graphs. I started taking a lot of classes and soon I had another major in which I eventually won a prize for my final thesis on Mughal Gardens. I truly think we all have to follow our own paths and if anyone did advise me back then I doubt I would have listened to them.

VR: You have obviously made your own name in Pakistani art history through your own hard work, yet your fathers’ name precedes. Just out of curiosity, if your father were still with us, do you think you would have enjoyed a collaboration with him or perhaps even asked him to be a part ofDreamscape?

AM: My father was my best friend. He never attempted to mentor me and always treated me as a buddy. His genius, humility and passion were truly inspiring for me. He also had a wicked sense of humor and we could make each other laugh. What was wonderful about doing shows in my gallery space in its early years was that my father and my mother could meet and interact with a new generation of artists and they in turn could talk to them. I kept on telling my co-curator Zarmeene Shah how much I missed my parents during Dreamscape and how much they would have enjoyed the energy of the show. I hope they were watching from far above.

Veera Rustomji is a Fine Art student at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She has been a freelance writer for the past two years and enjoys conducting research within the field of art.

By Ahmad Last updated Mar 11, 2016

Source: pakshowbiz.com

Karachi, Solo Show, Washed upon the shore

Amin Gulgee New Exhibition Inaugurated

KARACHI: An exhibition with the theme of “Washed Upon the Shore” featuring new works of eminent artiste Amin Gulgee kicked off at Canvas Gallery on 28th, December, 2015. The event is showcasing his new sculptures, installations and performances.

Zarmeene Shah, the curator of this exhibition, while speaking exclusively with this writer said, “Amin has created a world, which has three moons, instead of having one, revolving around the world. To understand this world, one needs a different approach of thinking, which is growing need of today’s world in order to find the solution to the problems we all are facing”.

Amin Gulgee is a renowned visual and performance artiste who has exhibited his work extensively, both globally and locally. His works are part of prestigious public and private collections.

He received a BA in Art, History and Economics from Yale University in 1987 and won the Conger B. Goodyear Fine Arts Award for his senior thesis on Moghul gardens.

Amin’s international group-shows include “Open: Esposizione Internazionale di Sculpture ed Installazioni” in Venice, Italy in 1998; “Pakistan: Another Vision,” Brunei Gallery, London, UK in 2000; the Beijing Biennial in 2003; “Beyond Borders,” National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India in 2005; “Paradise Lost,” WAH Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA in 2008; “Rites of Passage,” Ostrale, Dresden, Germany in 2010. And his installation, Char Bagh I, was shown at Art Taipei in 2012.

Gulgee has had more than 30 solo exhibitions in Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, India, the UK, Portugal and the US. His most recent solo was “Walking on the Moon” at Wei-Ling Contemporary in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2015.

He is also known for his performance works, an emerging field in Pakistan. Over the past decade, he had staged over a dozen performance works in Karachi and Lahore, Dubai and Nagoya, as well at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Gulgee was given Pakistan’s highest civilian honour, the President’s Pride of Performance in 2005 and was named as one of the Power Pakistan 100 in 2012, among other awards. He lives and works in Karachi.

The show will continue daily till December 31st 2015.

By

Farhan Khan -Dec 30, 2015

Source: liverostrum.com

Karachi, Solo Show, Washed upon the shore

Washed upon the shore … and more

Peerzada Salman – December 29, 2015

KARACHI: Amin Gulgee is a seasoned artist. He has been making sculptures and creating installations for more than two decades and is a socially mobile person. His work is known to all those in Pakistan who have even a modicum of interest in art. Has that taken the element of surprise out of his work? The answer is, no. Here’s why: an exhibition of Amin’s artworks captioned Washed upon the shore began at the Canvas Art Gallery on Monday evening. While at the heart of the show are the sculptures and installations that the artist has recently come up with, the opening day was marked by performances that were developed around his pieces made of copper, bronze, glass and silver leaf. Not that the artworks needed that, but the fact that the performances were in harmony (by virtue of their ceremonial posturing) with his creative output, lent an added dimension to the whole process.

It has to be said, though, that Amin’s art vocabulary has expanded horizontally. This means that he is not aiming for a higher goal; rather he is exploring the world, both physical and spiritual, which exists around him. ‘The Empty Egg’ series (copper) is an evidence of it. The emptiness is significant because it is indicative of lifelessness that artists are always taken in by. He is not investigating birth; he is looking for it. This can be inferred from the fact that using metal to talk about something that’s fragile and readily breakable is creating a contrast which is in-your-face. So it seems.

Then there are the unmissable moons in the exhibition. Again, they are not as much a cosmic entity as they are an object through which the artist tries to examine existence. What happens, in return, as with Amber Moon (copper and glass), that the artworks develop eyes of their own and start to examine the artist himself. The result is not easy to describe.

A series of copper and glasswork.

The artists who participated in the performance on the inaugural day of the show were Joshinder, Sunil, Ali, Ammad, Zeerak and Iram. The exhibition, curated by Zarmeene Shah, will remain open until Dec 31.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2015

Source: dawn.com

Karachi, Solo Show, Washed upon the shore

The mastery of invoking many an interpretation Amin Gulgee’s exhibition ‘Washed upon the Shore’ kicks off at Canvas Gallery

Karachi

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the light on broken glasses” – Anton Chekhov

Suspended from the ceiling defying their immense weight, two moons face each other, shining glamorously as the light catches the coloured glass and copper of which they are fashioned, however the beauty of the work lies on its conclave side, which is arguably as beautiful in its intricacy and impact as the front.

But maestro sculptor Amin Gulgee is not done yet. There is a third moon, a darker one that represents a sinister side, not within the dialogue of the other two but acting almost as witness to them.

The new series of works, presented in the exhibition, “Washed upon the Shore”, was unique in its nature, where the artist showed his brilliance by producing pieces manifesting a mysterious sentient presence, which could be at best felt than explained.

It is said that the beauty lies in the eye of beholder and the art viewers have the right to hold subjective interpretations which can be contrary to the artist’s perception.

As Gulgee extravagantly put it, “The viewers can have their own interpretations of my art. I have nothing to say on it and leave it open to them.”

It was not only his art, but the art performances at the exhibition too were just as captivating.

In one corner, a shirtless man was being painted by a young man. In a room, a woman was slowly rolling and shifting through a pile of coal. Outside the gallery, a man was combing out lice from a woman’s hair. What is the connecting thought behind these portrayals?

Is it a showcase of our society – the excruciating pain of a woman in her surroundings that are reflected through the heap of coal, the surreal romance involving lice and the colours depicting the imposition of one’s views and beliefs on the gullible other.

The interpretations may vary from person to person, but surely it was a deliberate effort from Gulgee to instigate thought for seeking a connection between the diverse representations of ideas, beautifully executed by the actors.

Huma Tassawur, a viewer, noted it was an innovative expression of ideas that expanded the scope of theatre.

For Shireen, an art student, it was the use of copper and glass on the art pieces that had left her amazed. “The innovative technique of presenting the thought is a completely new experience,” she added.

Art enthusiasts can experience Guljee’s mastery till Dec 21 at the Canvas Gallery.

Source: thenews.com.pk